Entering Shadowrun

Given reader response to the poll in my last post, Shadowrun Returns is the first game I’ll be tackling in my backlog. I bought it a couple of months back, but I had only given it a cursory play — basically I played for an hour and then moved on to something else. In my defense, I did buy a bunch of games at once, so I had distractions. Come to find out, I had actually started up the expansion campaign in that initial try, so this time around I started the proper way, with the original campaign. Character creation was first up, and not being very familiar with Shadowrun rules or terminology, it was hard to determine exactly what I wanted to play. Eventually I settled on being an Ork Rigger, and another iteration of Izlain was born.

Warning: there will be spoilers in this and following posts. If you haven’t played the game and plan to, I’d avoid reading further. 

I spent my initial Karma on Drone Control, and was dropped into the world, in my very own apartment.

Some tutorial bits and pieces popped up from time to time, but really the game ended up being pretty easy to figure out. As the story begins, I get a call from my “friend” Sam. Turns out he’s dead, and this “Dead Man’s Switch” has been activated, causing a recording to be delivered to me.

There’s a flash back moment during this conversation, which is effectively a combat tutorial. None of this was present when I played the game last, but that’s because my dumb ass was playing the expansion campaign. I was smart enough to figure out what I was doing anyway, but it was nice to have the introductory stuff that most games have when you start out. After that part plays out, Sam’s Lawyer explains that if I find out who kills Sam, there’s a shitload of money in it for me. The first step is to go talk to the Coroner, who resides in good ol’ Seattle.

Dresden is a Dwarf, and a hard working Coroner. He gives you what little info he has about what happened to Sam, but it is revealed shortly that there is something larger going on. Basically, there is a Jack the Ripper serial killer mimic out there, and he’s harvesting organs. For what is uncertain, but the murders keep cropping up around town. The Sheriff of sorts shows up, and doesn’t sound very interested in finding the killer, though he is going through the motions as his job dictates. Dresden directs you to take a look in the body lockers in the back, and upon inspection you find a guy named Jake in one of them. Turns out he’s had some issues with a local gang and had been hiding out here. He saw Sam the night he was murdered, so he’s your first lead. Unfortunately due to his gang problem, he needs your help before he’ll help you. I convinced him to pay me up front 🙂

Enter the Barrens. Jake and I head to a nearby alley to pick up his stash, netting me a gun in the process. Of course, some street thugs attack us for the loot, but we dropped them with no problems. I ended up picking a rifle as my gun of choice, because I’d prefer to let my drone do the up close stuff while I hang back. Might as well be safe to start out.

Around the corner a distressed man asked for my help with some thugs in the local market, who had been extorting the vendors. I made short work of those assholes. But apparently I’m to be the town savior! I guess that’s typical for RPGs.

After handling everyone’s light work, we headed down south to find the Halloweener gang that Jake was having problems with. They weren’t much of an issue either, until their leader showed up. Oh who am I kidding? He was a pushover too. And ugly. He didn’t get any second chances.

After the gang trouble was fixed up, Jake pointed me in the direction of the scene of Sam’s murder, but declined to accompany me. Apparently he has issues with the boys in blue.

The cops had the scene cornered off, but I managed to bribe the officer to let me in. I found some evidence, some bum’s belongings (which I returned) and a receipt from the Seamstresses Union. Apparently Sam had been there before being murdered. So I was off to investigate.

The Seamstresses Union wasn’t too far away, and once inside, it appeared to only be a tavern. I was wrong about that first assumption though, as it was much more than that. Black Market vendors were inside, and they had better gear for sale than anything I was using at that point. I had earned some nuyen from my previous endeavours, so I bought some new gear…

…and ended up looking like a tourist. It was pretty funny, but somehow not what I expected. New gear in hand, I was looking for an employee of the Union that goes by Coyote. That name was on the receipt I found at the crime scene, and is possibly the last person to see Sam alive. I was directed to the back of the building to find Mrs Kubota, the building’s proprietor.

This feels like a good place to stop. Fear not, I did play beyond this already and have more to share with you, which will be coming very soon. Until then.

#shadowrun #shadowrunreturns #crpg